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Confusing a mystic

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"This pencil, for example -- it had to come from somewhere."

 

"Do you mean, at some point, however far back in the past, it had to be created by someone or something?"

 

"Yes."
 

"Out of nothing?"

 

"Yes."

 

"I see.  Does this apply to all things that are in the present, all things that exist right now?"

 

"Yes, I think so."

 

"So, in general, if something exists, it had to be created at some point."

 

"Yes, that's right."

 

"Well, clearly the next question is, does God exist?"

 

"Yes, of course he does."

 

"And again, if something exists, it had to be created at some point in the past."

 

"Yes..."

 

"Then who created God?"

 

Silence.

 

"And that creator -- who created Him?"

 

Silence.

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Most laymen would concur that nothing does not transmogrify into something. Many then turn around and almost immediately ask where the something comes from.

 

The onus of proof comes to play on the one who asserts such an entityless event must have transpired.

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Most laymen would concur that nothing does not transmogrify into something. Many then turn around and almost immediately ask where the something comes from....

 

This would imply that most laymen believe the universe is eternal, and had no creator (a creator that, at some point, created the universe out of nothing).  Do you think this is the case?

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I think it implies that most laymen are not keen as to how the two premises contradict one another.

 

Most would not expect a Jaguar to materialize out of thin air in their garage, but do not associate asking where existence comes from as being a different form of basically the same expectation.

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I should elaborate on the exchange in the opening post to this thread.  The 'mystic' in the exchange would agree that the matter in this particular pencil likely originated in a tree of some kind, and that that tree also came from somewhere, likely without mystic contribution.  His statement is meant to mean that he believes the matter within that pencil (even though it may have changed its form any number of times since creation) must have had -- in the first instance -- its origin in the creation of its matter by God, very likely when 'He' created the universe.

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The trouble is with the word "created". 

 

Rocks weren't created, they just are, and before they were something else. 

 

Creation means something specific. It is a work, a process of reason and selection. It exists to fulfill a rational end. 

 

   If a being was truly all-powerful, eternal and omnipresent, it would have no reason to create, because without the alternative of life and death, value would be meaningless to it. Why does something so powerful and so durable need a mind or values or preferences on what primates do with their genitals? There would be no force of evolution that could force it to develop or evolve. 

    

   An eternal all powerful entity would be a terrifying force, not a sentient being. 

Edited by Hairnet
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The your mystic friend didn't understand how to argue the cosmological argument very well. Usually, the Kalam version of the argument is offered, whereby it's said that everything that began to exist has a cause. And as the thinking goes, God didn't begin to exist, and therefore doesn't require a cause, and that God exists outside the time/space realm. The Kalam argument really focuses on the creation of the universe itself, as in the Big Bang. 

 

Also your answer to your friend might confuse him, but it doesn't solve the problem he's posing to you, which is, "How do you deal with the problem of infinite regression without a first cause of some sort?" Have you answered that question? You've only extended the problem, not solved for it.

Edited by secondhander
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